Moonlight
by marzoog
Summary: How can might-have-beens fill up a quota of sadness he had not thought possible? The moon shines on, over death and euphoria, but does not absorb them. Why can’t he?


We're all of us stars

We're fading away

Just try not to worry

You'll see us some day

Just take what you need

And be on your way

And stop crying your heart out

**Oasis, Stop Crying Your Heart Out**

**O&O&O&**

_There will be moonlight outside her window. There she will be, laughing as she will fling open the window. Her hair will be mussed, and her cheeks bright. Rilla Blythe is beautiful in moonlight. _

_"Come on, Rilla. Let's go for a moon spree!" He will call up. _

_She will smile, corners of her mouth will be pulled up by puppet strings. _

_"Be right there, Carl." She will stage whisper down. _

_In a moment she will disappear. _

(She is always doing that, _he tells himself._ Elusive, like the moon.)

**O&O&O&**

"Carl?"

"Huh?"

"Carl! Answer the question."

"What? What question?"

"….the one I just asked."

"You think I was listening? I'm flattered."

"Carl, what am I going to do with you?"

"Beat me black and blue?"

"Carl, that's mean. You know I'd never do that."

"I'm glad to be reassured of that. I was starting to be afraid. Now, what were you talking about?"

"I had a question for you."

"Alright, shoot."

"Do you think I should go to Queens next year?"

"Well, if you want to, Moonbeam, I think you should dive straight in."

"But the problem is that I'm not sure I want to."

"Well, if you're not sure then don't do it."

"But Mother would be terribly disappointed, and I don't know if I should be willing to be the dunce of the Blythe family, or if I should make myself go through Queens."

"Well, Moonbeam, you sound like you want to go."

"But, oh….Carl, I don't want to class everyday anymore, or sit in a closed room listening to lectures. I want to go to parties and have lots of good times."

"Well, do that then. Remember, your happiness is more important than what your family wants."

"Thank you, Carl. You're such a brick of a friend. I don't think there's anybody in the world quite so brickey as you." In an impetuous gesture of friendship, she kisses him on the cheek.

"Anytime," the moonlight hides his blush.

**O&O&O& **

As he is in muddy trenches the thought comes across that he detests moonlight nowadays. All day he will look for bugs and beetles and creepy crawlies til the sun kisses his face, but he can't bear the thought of going out outside at night.

Once, his dad told him that his mother lived in the sky now, in Heaven. Faith and Jerry and even Una had sometimes looked to that sky in reverence as if they remembered believed that, in some fasion, that was true. They would think that mother was in light now, that the Golden Sun had swallowed her up. But he would always look at night.

His mother must have been taken care of by the lovely, silvery Lady Moon.

A full moon is like a jolly, whiskered old uncle, but when the moon would be a small sliver, he would always think he could see his mother's face. The Lady Moon and Mr. Man-in-the-Moon are always two very different people.

He misses them, but doesn't dare look.

Maybe he is afraid that he will find everything he is, and everything he has lost in that night sky. Maybe not.

O&O&O&

"So, Moonbeam decided to take the dive, did she?"

"Why, I don't know what ever do you mean?"

She laughs. He laughs. She is too busy laughing to notice the bitterness of his chuckle.

"You've decided to get hitched?"

"Well, if one meets the right one there seems to be little else to do."

She is all smile and radiance, he thinks. And he lets her go.

Flash forward a few hours.

Night has come with burned down tapers. Violet patterned shadows dance through tree limbs. He is running, but will not admit it. If he admits that, there would be too much else to start taking the blame for, things he refuses to say.

Perhaps he has gone insane with unsaid things already.

There is something about being a beacon, being a flame of onesidedness that has burned him from the inside out. Too much emitted emotion, he knows, can cause a world of pain, but he had always thought that if you give and don't take, if you shine on like the moon, it won't.

He has been wrong, he discovers. It hurts very much, a thistle in his heart. A ball of pain and substance, no sliver that can at least give him some relief. Pain as large and overwhelming as Mr. Man-in-the-Moon.

But how can this be? How can might-have-beens fill up a quota of sadness he had not thought possible? The moon shines on, over death and euphoria, but does not absorb them.

Why can't he?

**O&O&O& **

"What are you doing out here, so late after dark?"

"Same thing as you. Taking a walk."

"Who sent you, Una? Faith or Rosemary?"

"Actually, neither Faith nor Rosemary are that observant. I came of my own volition."

"I wouldn't expect to hear you say things like that."

"There a lot of things one wouldn't expect about me, I guess."

"Isn't there in everyone?"

"In some form or another."

"Then what are you trying to say?"

"You were always more perceptive then Faith gave you credit for, Carl."

A pause.

"I was in love with Walter Blythe."

"What?"

She gives a little laugh at his surprise. "See what I mean? Not something one would expect."

"Are expectations that important?"

"Well, they say that those in love can more easily see others in love, and I suppose the same goes for those who have unrequited love, so I thought you'd understand more quickly." She gives him an arch look.

"Una, what do you mean?"

"I saw the way you look at Rilla, Carl."

"Who are you and what have you done with my sister?" He tries humor to cover his anger in being discovered, and, even as he says it, he is turning away from her to look at the hill.

"Carl, you and I are more alike than is generally thought."

"We're brother and sister. Aren't we supposed to be alike?"

"Yes, but always thought you were more like me than Jerry or Faith."

"How so?"

"You try to be loud and friendly to hide your shyness, and I try to be shy to hide my emotions. Really, we're all apples off the same tree."

"Una, that doesn't sound like you at all. Why are you saying these things?"

"They're what you need to hear. And," she pauses, looking at the spring with a secret upward twitch of her lips, "one can't be the same all the time. Learn to expect unexpectedness in people, Carl."

With those immortal words, she walks out of the shadow of Rainbow Valley to the beacon light which is their home.

**O&O&O&**

There exists a saying that it is the journey and not the destination that truly matters. But what sense is there is that? Aren't journeys only a route, only a road as straight as spaghetti noodles? What is this modern notion that what drives us onwards isn't the most important thing in our lives?

There were many times when her face was what was in front of his eyes during his sojourn in a hospital bed. Silly thought, he lies cursing modern flippancy. What is it about these times that somehow has made romanticism garish and unrefined?

Symbolism, metaphor, allegory. When it comes to it, they mean nothing. Nothing more than the print they are on the page. What is real cannot be force-fed through paper. Pain, suffering, but also giddiness, misery, fatigue, but also hope. Is there a way to get back these lost things?

Any way at all?

**O&O&O&**

This girl was dressed in pale pink, making her look like a wild rose amid a hothouse of the sunset. Carl staggered, a little, a twig giving him away. Her face jerks over to him.

"I'm sorry. Have I frightened you?" Unsteady. Curses.

" Oh, no. I'm just enjoying the sunset. I didn't realize many knew about this spot."

"I didn't either." He was introduced to her somewhere along the line of tonight's wedding party, but, for the life of him, can't remember her name.

"I'm sorry if I've invaded your hopes for privacy. I'll just efface myself."

"Don't do that. We can both just have solitude together."

"Is that possible?"

"With some people. You seem to be one of them."

"Bit of an elitist, are you, Carl Meredith?" So she had remembered his name!

"Not really. Just anti-social for all kinds of company in certain moods." What _was_ her name?

"A polite name for a snob." She turned and smiled at him. It seemed to have a greater radiance and glow than the sunset behind her.

"You call me a snob? If you're judging by those standards then everyone is a snob in their own way. Everyone has society they wish to avoid. Don't lump me in with the lot that carries its nose above the world's fouler smells."

"I didn't mean to upset you. I just thought I saw you at the wedding and I was afraid you were one of Ken's boring collage friends with trust funds as deep as the Atlantic."

"While I am flattered you could mistake me for one of them, I hasten to inform you that I have no steady income, and happen to be the family friend of the bride's, not the groom's."

"It is a horrible thought that I could possibly not know all the people my brother invited to his wedding, but it is one I had harbored."

"You're Ken's sister?"

"You must be Faith's brother! And Jerry's! And Una's! The one who had chickenpox the one time I got to meet them. I didn't connect the last name, though I should have."

"And you're the infamous Persis Ford?"

"The very one, Infamous Carl Meredith."

If her smile had been a sunset, her laugh was a trail of moondust.

**O&O&O&**

What are happy endings, really? To end a book properly an author should give the reader some sense of fulfillment, a sense of closure, a sense of peace. An author must capture a zenithal moment and let the reader ride upon it.

But is that really happiness?

Happiness should be drawn in loops, going round and round again. It is a never ending cycle, an annual that will bud in its own due time.

**O&O&O&**

_His dreams are different now. Ever since he met Persis Ford, they have all been at sunset in a Rainbow Valley grove, no longer covered in milky moonshine. Blackness receding into light in a kind of backwards sun-cycle. Jumbled up sorrow and angst have come unraveled, thoughts now as clear and joyful as shafted light. _

_"Isn't the moon lovely tonight, darling?" Her head lifts off his shoulder. _

_It is The Lady Moon tonight, slender as an aspen and silver as a birch. The perfect night for a moon-spree. He ponders for a moment, as he sits on this train with his new wife on their way to their honeymoon, where the moon has led him. Moonlight is like life, shining, beautiful, and precious. A thing to be kept and treasured. _

_Thanking it silently for its soft light, but glad it will fade soon into the dewy dawn and leave them in the brighter light of the sun's rays, he finally says: _

_"Yes. Yes, it is. Most lovely." _

**O&O&O&**

A/N: Ok, I don't know if it's just me, but that was plain weird. Yeah. : scratches head : I just hope it wasn't scaring some people, or leaving too many people confused. : stops scratching and goes down on knees to beg for reviews :

Have a dandyiful day!


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